RESPONSIBLE PARTY: DAVID JOACHIM

RESPONSIBLE PARTY: DAVID JOACHIM; Shredders With a Taste For Plastic

By JUDY TONG

Published: March 30, 2003

ABOUT two years ago, the customer service people at Royal Consumer Information Products in Somerset, N.J., started getting phone calls from government workers with distinctly 21st-century conundrums. Confidential records were being stored not only on paper but also on compact discs, and when those records had to be discarded, the CD's had to be destroyed. They wanted to know whether their Royal paper shredders could do the job. At the time, they could not.

But a new line of shredders from Royal, called the Media Destroyers, is up to the task.

After hearing about the phone calls, project managers and executives at Royal, a consumer electronics company that is part of the Olivetti Group of Italy, realized that they were overlooking something. They knew that more people were buying paper shredders to combat the growing problem of identity theft. How far those thieves were going, however, was another story.

''More and more people, when they buy a computer, they're getting a CD burner,'' said David Joachim, 43, the director of marketing, who oversaw the development of the new shredders. ''And what they're doing is storing information and then just simply tossing those things in the garbage. Once the garbage hits the street, it's public domain. Somebody can very clearly come pull that disc out of your garbage, put it on a computer and learn all kinds of information.''

There are now four models in the Media Destroyer line -- two small ones for home use and two larger ones for professional use. Those for the home are the MD80, which shreds only CD's, and the MD100, which can shred up to seven folded sheets at a time, as well as credit cards, CD's, floppies and 3.5-inch hard disks. Both are small enough to sit on a desktop.

The professional, heavy-duty shredders are the 1280MX and the 15MX. The 1280MX can handle 12 sheets at a time, while the 15MX can gobble 15. Both can shred CD's and computer disks.

To handle the job of slicing plastic, and even the small piece of sliding metal on 3.5-inch disks, the gears in all four models are made entirely of steel. Many other shredders combine metal and plastic.

The suggested sale prices of the Media Destroyers, now available in some stores, range from $79.99 to $179.99.

The shredders, however, cannot handle Zip disks, which are nearly twice as thick as hard disks. A shredder that could shred something so thick would be unsafe because it would also be big enough for a child's fingers. For those disks, a hammer may be the only recourse.

Photos: The MD100 is one of Royal's Media Destroyers. David Joachim was responsible for development of the machines which can shred CD's.